PRODUCING POLITICS:

Art, Commerce, and Manipulation in the Political Comedies of David Mamet

John M. ParrishLoyola Marymount University

DRAFT ONLY: PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION

ABSTRACT: This article examines the themes of art, commerce, and manipulation in David Mamet’s stage comedy November and in his earlier screenplay Wag the Dog. Though both of these works have generally been dismissed by critics as frivolities, this article argues that taken together the two works articulate a significant theoretical view about the relative dangers which commerce and art respectively pose to public life. In November, President Charles Smith’s farcical scheme shows how politics makes use of artistic invention to achieve its ends, while both art and politics in turn depend upon the forces of human desire represented by commerce. Wag the Dog explores more deeply the uneasy alliance between politics and artistic invention, represented by its two main characters, the political “fixer” Conrad Brean and the Hollywood “producer” Stanley Motss. While not at all sanguine about the dangers which commerce may pose, both comedies explicitly suggest that, of the two forces, art may in the end prove the more dangerous form of infection in the body politic.

In a story in The New York Times Magazine on October 17, 2004, journalist Ron

Suskind reported a conversation he had participated in two years previously with an

anonymous “senior advisor” to George W. Bush:

He told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’1

1 Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.

The quotation from Suskind’s article has since become justly famous and widely cited in

public discussions of the changing nature of American politics. But Suskind’s own

interpretation of the quotation’s significance is in one important sense too narrow: it

restricts the quotation’s application to the ethos of the Bush Administration specifically,

rather than seeing it as capturing an important change in the nature of politics (or at least

American politics) more generally. The idea that political “reality” is more an artistic

creation than an external given has echoed clearly through the succeeding decade, from

Mitt Romney’s pollster declaring that “we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by

fact-checkers” to Donald Trump’s reported prediction eighteen months ahead of entering

the 2016 race that his candidacy would “suck all the oxygen out of the room” because he

knew “how to work the media in a way that they will never take the lights off me.”2 And

indeed, for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, this change to the nature of

political reality had been apparent long before Bush, Romney, or Trump ever arrived on

the national political stage.

More than three years before Bush took the oath of office, in the film Wag the

Dog, the celebrated playwright David Mamet3 explored the ability of entrepreneurial

political actors to shape and script public events to suit their private agendas, in a way

that leaves “reality” panting to keep up. More recently, in his stage comedy November, a

broad farce set in the Oval Office, Mamet returned to the theme of public manipulation, 2 James Bennet, “‘We’re Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers,” The Atlantic, August 28, 2012; Eli Stokols and Ben Schrekinger, “How Trump Did It,” Politico.com, February 1, 2016.3 Throughout this essay I attribute lines and thoughts from Wag the Dog to David Mamet, even though the film gives co-credit to Hilary Henkin for the screenplay. There has been some controversy regarding the authorship of the film, with director Barry Levinson maintaining publicly that Mamet should have received sole credit for the film’s screenplay. (Robert W. Welkos, “Giving Credit Where It’s Due,” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1998). For present purposes my focus on Mamet as author derives more from the continuities in language and theme between Wag the Dog and November, which is sufficient evidence to me that Mamet is probably responsible for those elements of Wag the Dog which interest me here. However, Henkin is in fact the credited co-author of the film’s screenplay, and my omission of “… and Henkin” when discussing Wag the Dog is primarily for the sake of space and simplification.

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showing again how the power of artistic invention – this time fueled more explicitly by

commercial and pecuniary motives – can refashion politics according to the artist’s own

will.

These two stories are comedies, and respect for their contribution to political

discourse – much less political philosophy – has not been very generous. Wag the Dog

has been dismissed by critics as “a one-joke squib, an extended Saturday Night Live

sketch … [that is] rarely more than mildly amusing, a strained, toothless affair, low on

genuine insight into the political process.”4 Similarly, critics have dismissed November

for its “silliness” and its “frivolous” approach to these issues, regretting that Mamet did

not have “something a little more relevant to say” about contemporary politics.5 In the

following essay, I want to argue instead that taken together, November and Wag the Dog

actually offer perceptive and far-sighted analyses of the changing nature of contemporary

politics, and of how the forces of art, commerce, and manipulation interact to challenge –

and perhaps to doom – America’s aspiration to genuine democratic self-governance.

Commercial Politics and Artistic Politics

Mamet’s 2008 comedy November studies the closing days of the disastrous

presidency of the inept and corrupt Charles Smith (Nathan Lane). Just days away from an

election he is bound to lose, with his poll numbers “lower than Gandhi’s cholesterol,”

Smith is searching frantically for a strategy to turn things around. Finally he hits on the

idea of commercial blackmail: he proposes to use the tradition that the president pardons

4 Philip French, “David Mamet and Film,” in Christopher Bigsby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 5 “November an undernourished political farce,” Reuters, January 21, 2008.

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a turkey before Thanksgiving in order to threaten the pardoning of all American turkeys

(thus ruining the “turkey industry’s” big day) to obtain $200 million for last-minute

campaign advertising. Things go awry when the promise he has to make to his

speechwriter Bernstein (Laurie Metcalf) in exchange for her eloquent pardoning

proclamation – that he marry her and her female partner on television – turns out to

undermine the deal.

Mamet’s account of Smith’s presidency, and Smith’s own conception of

democracy, both emphasize the interdependence of the commercial and political spheres.

Democracy depends abjectly on money. “Two things you need to win an election,”

Smith’s chief of staff Archer (Dylan Baker) tells him: “a s**tload of money, and a good

idea.” (III.94)6 (Notice that the money comes first.) The president laments his own

fundraising plight in the lofty language of democratic principle: “I would hate to think

that the people were deprived of a choice because one side … simply ran out of cash.” (I,

14). He views the presidency rather like being a contestant on a game show, reasoning

that he should automatically get a presidential library, “like a lovely parting gift.” (I, 11).

He also evaluates the presidency itself in commercial terms – “it’s not worth being

President,” he complains – and eventually accepts his inevitable defeat with the sour

grapes observation that the office affords “too little opportunity for theft.” (II, 71; III,

119). Even his love for his country is in essence a love for its commerciality and

corruption, as evidenced in the play’s closing lines, an exchange with the Native

American chief and (unsuccessful) assassin Dwight Grackle (Michael Nichols):

6 References to November (New York: Vintage, 2008) are in the form (Act, Page). For the reader’s convenience I have occasionally translated Mamet’s dialogue, which is often written in incomplete sentences, into complete sentences where this is clarifying and can be done without any loss in meaning. For example, the line referenced by this note actually reads: “Two things you need. To win an election…. A shitload of money …. AND a good idea.” I have not removed any words in the process of doing this except where marked with an ellipsis (…).

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GRACKLE: Sir? Wyntcha just pardon me, give me Nantucket Island, you’n’me’ll build a casino.

(Pause)

SMITH: Jesus I love this country. (III, 120).

Smith exhibits very little hypocrisy in this intermingling of public and pecuniary

interests. He does on one occasion object to the turkey industry’s representative (Ethan

Phillips) using the word “bid” to describe what the president is proposing: “How dare

you use such language in this sacred office.” (I, 38-39). But this is followed almost

immediately by a return to the crassest possible level: what he wants to hear from the

turkey industry representative, he says, is “a number so high even dogs can’t hear it.” (I,

38-39). On all other occasions he is transparent in his corruption. “Who can we shake

down?” he asks, contemplating his electoral challenges. (I, 49) Soon thereafter, he

blandly accepts Bernstein’s description of his proposal as “an exercise in extortion,” and

turns immediately to promise to “trade” with her – “whatever you want” (a formulation

which unwittingly sets the ground rules for the deal with Bernstein that will finally

unravel the whole farcical scheme). (II, 64). Smith’s one redeeming feature (apart from

his endearing candor) is his (initial) loyalty to his speechwriter Bernstein, whom he

resists betraying when it first begins to appear advantageous. Even this loyalty, though,

he explains in commercial terms (“I owe her”); and consequently is vulnerable to his

adviser’s commercial evaluation of the situation: “Sometimes, Chuck … part of the

burden of command … is you have to sell the other fellow out.” (III, 96-97).

If commerce is one of the values that animates politics in November, the other is

certainly artistic invention. Smith and Archer view “reality” as being thoroughly

malleable. We see this from the opening passages of the play, in which Smith, in order to

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get out of an unpleasant conversation with his wife, tells her that Iran has launched a

nuclear attack. (I, 9). Reality responds rapidly to invention, as a representative of Iran

calls to deny the rumor, and Israel threatens reprisals for Iran’s (fictional) strike. (“Christ,

that woman is a gossip,” Smith observes). (I, 30-35 and at 31). Later, Smith decries the

“fricken expert[s]” who “cost me this election” and contrasts the value of their expertise

with the inventors – “tinkerers” and “shade-tree mechanics” such as Edison, Ford, and

the Wright Brothers – who “made this country great.” “Some fella, doodling on a

napkin…. Dreaming. He looks up: ‘Hey. I betcha this’ll work…. Jonas Salk gets up one

day, ‘Hey, you know what? F**k polio…. ” (II, 61-62). Nothing more to it than that; the

pure business of invention obviates completely the need for technical expertise.

There are limits of course to what invention can do, and excessive use of artistic

invention can weaken its power in the long run, as Archer notes in explaining that

“nobody cares” about raising the panic level after so many years of American leaders

crying wolf. (I, 13-14). By the play’s end, however, the White House is resorting to the

old standard of “‘National Security’” to justify its subterfuge regarding Bernstein’s

lesbian wedding. (III, 98). When their attempt to dupe Bernstein by turning the cameras

for the live TV broadcast of the wedding off during the ceremony fails, Smith resorts to

proposing that “one of you throw on a sportcoat, come back, allow the American Public

to infer that one of you’s a man.” (III, 100). Bernstein responds by insisting: “Sir, my

partner is a woman.” Smith replies, with Clintonian reflectiveness, “Who is to say what a

woman is?” (III, 100). By the end, Smith and Archer are ready to perpetrate a massive

“Bird Flu” panic in order to scare the voters into staying home, thereby offering Smith his

one slim chance at winning re-election by default. (III, 116).

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In November, the capacity for artistic invention is taken to be the very essence of

the presidential office. To Smith’s protest that he is “just some guy in a suit,” Bernstein

responds that this was true of Washington, Lincoln, and “all the other guys who sat here.”

(III, 119). The essence of the presidency, she suggests, is its capacity for improvisation,

which is to say, for invention or for fiction. Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was a

supreme act of improvisation, she suggests, and his marriage of Bernstein and her female

partner would be nothing more, or less, than the same sort of presidential invention. (III,

119) Smith agrees: to Archer’s objection that “it’s not legal,” the president answers by

referring to this capacity of the office for endless invention: “Let the next guy figure it

out.” (III, 119).

In Charles Smith, corruption joins forces with invention and demonstrates how

much power each can draw from the other. Perhaps the quintessential corrupt act for

Smith is the selling of presidential pardons: “I can pardon whoever I like,” he argues.

“Clinton proved that.” (II, 55). It proves a very short step, therefore, from selling real

pardons to felons to selling (or withholding) fictional pardons for fowl. Here too reality

proves no impediment to sheer invention:

SMITH (on the phone): What if, historically, at Thanksgiving, Americans DID NOT EAT TURKEY. (Pause). Well, they ate pork. (Pause). Well who the f**k knows if they did or not.7 There’s guys say World War Two never took place. (Pause). I dunno, some Frenchmen. (I, 43).

When his plans to get the pork industry on board with his scheme fails, he switches

without missing a beat to an even less plausible replacement meat:

SMITH: They didn’t eat pork on Thanksgiving…. They didn’t eat Turkey…. What about if they ate tuna?

7 This remark of Smith’s echoes philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s differentiation of “bullshit” from lying, with the former signifying indifference to truth rather than the deliberate concealment of it. Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

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ARCHER: Is, I believe, a Pacific fish…. And the pilgrims … landed on the East Coast.

SMITH: Okay, okay. The pilgrims. They did not eat ‘tuna.’ They ate some species of ‘codfish,’ which, the Indians … in their ignorance called tooohnah, which in the blah-blah language means ‘great abundance from the sea.’ (I, 45)

In Smith’s world, artistic invention responds directly and purely to the demands

of commerce. Indeed, the art of political fiction is itself a kind of commercial transaction,

a “buying” and “selling” of the political actor’s invention, as Smith clearly understands.

When a skeptical pork industry representative suggests that Smith try his proposed

promotion on another holiday, the President explains “that’s not what we’re selling.” (I,

44). Later, the turkey industry representative objects to Smith’s Thanksgiving fiction that

“the American people will never never buy it.” (II, 60). This motivation of art by

commerce is the foundation of Smith’s political philosophy. The successful political actor

is lost, Smith maintains, if she once forgets that the “bulls**t” in which the politician

trades must be ultimately responsive, just as politics itself is, to the forces of commerce.

He explains to Bernstein, with Archer’s assistance:

SMITH: All your fricken bulls**t about ‘social justice.’ That’s swell. What you forgot: THIS IS A DEMOCRACY. Which means: The people make the laws. And if you want to make the laws, you go to the people who make the laws, and what do you do?

ARCHER: You bribe them.

SMITH: YOU BRIBE THEM. You give them something they’d like. In order to get something you’d like. Just like you did in third grade…. You say ‘gimme your candy bar and I’ll give you my orange….. I could couch my language in the gibberism you speak. But I’m addressing you, like I’d talk to anyone else, because, you say that in the schoolyard, and the other kid says ‘f**k you.’ Weep weep weep you say, I’ll take this case to the Supreme Court. Guess what: the Supreme Court wants something too. Everyone wants something. The power to trade this for that separates us from the lower-life forms, like the uh uh large apes, or the Scandanavians. (II, 65-66).

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This is further true because invention itself only works if it is directly responsive

to the same factor that drives and guides commercial exchange, namely human desire.

Bernstein’s first cut at the speech condemning Thanksgiving is rife with abstract liberal

clichés thoroughly divorced from the world of desire; Thanksgiving is wrong, she begins,

because it celebrates “patriarchy,” “exploitation of indigenous peoples,” and

“conspicuous consumption … combined under the auspices of a seemingly non-

governmental holiday which is in essence, a hymn to the power of the state.” (II, 56).

Fortunately, Smith is at hand to point her in the right direction:

SMITH: You want to rile people up, you’ve got to give them something to like better than the things they like, OR something to HATE better than the things they like…. You can tell them a good IDEA, but, that only works, if it lets them DO something, which, they couldn’t, course of events, do. Like Free Love or kill the Jews. (Pause). That’s what we’re aiming for. Throw in some sex for God’s sake. (II, 57)

With this direction, Bernstein is able to unleash her powers of artistic invention in a more

politically productive direction:

BERNSTEIN: Oh. (Pause). All right. Thanksgiving was not, originally, a holiday of thanks, or harvest, but a historic day of orgy. When the Native Americans cast off all shackles of … sexual restraint.

SMITH: Well, now you’re talking.

BERNSTEIN: And cavorted, naked … making the woods ring with their savage, orgiastic cries … while the blessed feast cooled on the table. (II, 57).

SMITH: …. proved by a set of documents discovered JUST THIS MORNING by Navy Seals, diving off Plymouth Rock, in the wreck of a 1642, uh, uh, …

ARCHER: … excursion boat.

SMITH: In the handwriting of a nondenominational minister… in which he CONFESSES, that Thanksgiving was a day of orgy, and that those who celebrate

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it are damned… screw with me, will ya …? All right, bring in the turkey guy. (II, 57-59).

Thus the world Mamet creates in November is one in which art, commerce, and

politics mutually depend upon and reinforce one another. That there is a symbiotic

relationship of sorts between politics and commerce is a relatively familiar thought.

Politics sets the ground rules which commerce must either cope with, co-opt, or

circumvent in order to produce a profit; while commerce not only motivates the grifting

practitioners of politics, but also funds the creation of the political spectacle they enact

(the whole $200 million bribe, after all, winds up going to pay for television advertising).

But by introducing artistic invention into the mix, November suggests a more complex

and profound relationship between the three. As Smith’s farcical scheme demonstrates,

politics depends upon art to animate and inspire the public to the feelings and convictions

which the schemes of political actors require. At the same time, as Smith teaches

Bernstein, art is powerless unless it is able to tap into the forces of human desire – forces

for which commerce is both the measurer and the procurer.

Politics as Pageant

The themes Mamet explores in November are themes he had previously

considered previously (and more profoundly) in the 1997 film Wag the Dog. But whereas

November sees commerce as being perhaps the most important of these powers, in Wag

the Dog commerce, though still present, takes a back seat to the alliance between art and

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politics. What Wag the Dog discovers, however, is that that alliance is a deeply uneasy

one, with troublesome implications for democratic politics.

Like November, Wag the Dog takes place in the closing days of a presidential

election campaign. The film tells the story of two crises: first, a political crisis which

threatens to engulf the White House in scandal; and second, a fictional international crisis

(set in Albania) invented by White House advisors to distract attention from the scandal

until the pending election has passed. At the film’s beginning, the President (never seen

on camera) has been implicated in an indiscretion involving a “Firefly girl,” who claims

the President molested her inside the Oval Office.8 Conrad Brean,9 a mysterious political

consultant labeled “Mr. Fixit,” arrives at the White House to find a way to control the

damage from the scandal until after the election, which is two weeks away. He enlists a

Hollywood producer, Stanley Motss (pronounced “Moss”) (Dustin Hoffman), in his quest

to “produce” a fake war to distract the public from the Firefly girl scandal.

From the outset we are given to understand that “reality” in Wag the Dog is just as

malleable as we found it to be in November (if not more so). In a telling exchange, the

President’s aide Ames (Anne Heche) asks Brean “Don’t you want to know if it’s true?”,

to which Brean responds, “What difference does it make if it’s true? It’s a story. And if it

breaks they’re gonna have to run with it.” (4:30).10 Politics has needs of its own which

mere “reality” is incapable of fulfilling, in Brean’s philosophy. Consequently, the

political artist’s task is to arrange matters as they need to be, then trust to the public’s

gullibility in explaining any troubles away. (It has always been thus: according to Brean,

8 The uncanny resemblance of this premise to the facts of the Monica Lewinsky scandal appears to have been entirely coincidental, as the film predates the public disclosure of that affair.9 The first name seems to evoke the verb “to con,” while the surname suggests perhaps a blend of “brain” and “preen.”10 Parenthetical references to Wag the Dog are to the point in the film’s running time where the quotation occurs.

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the first draft of the Warren Commission Report claims President Kennedy “was killed

by a drunk driver.”) (16:39). The public’s ignorance facilitates this: the main reason

Brean selects Albania as the perfect subject for the crisis he must stage is precisely

because the American public is completely ignorant about the country.

For Brean, “reality” is a canvas on which the political artist can paint whatever

picture is desired. As Machiavelli observed, in perceiving events the public has no choice

but to take a mere part for the whole; the nature of modern media has only exacerbated

the problem, which allows much greater leeway to those artists and inventors who are in

the business of producing public illusions.11 Brean’s favorite example of this reductive

impulse of the modern media is the famous video of the smart bomb going down the

chimney in the Gulf War. “Twenty-five hundred missions a day, a hundred days, one

video of one bomb, Mr. Motss, the American people bought that war.” (16:09). To

objections that the truth will eventually out, Brean responds, “Who’s gonna tell ‘em?”

(8:38). Besides, he reminds his co-conspirators, “It doesn’t have to prove out. It just has

to distract ‘em.” (7:25). This strategy has long been standard practice in politics, Brean

argues, citing President Reagan’s invasion of Granada hard on the heels of the Beirut

disaster. “That was their M.O.: change the story, change the lead,” Brean explains. (8:19).

Whether or not the Gulf War smart bomb was faked, Brean and Motss take the

fact that it could have been faked as artistic inspiration to shoot their own war “footage”

to create a poignant scene symbolizing the terrible, fictional Albanian conflict. Whereas

in November the professionals spin their political fictions out of thin air, making them

ultimately nothing more than lying words, in Wag the Dog the political fictions receive

11 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. and ed. Harvey Mansfield, 2nd ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) ch. 18, p. 71.

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form and substance, and thus greater emotional and artistic force, through being joined

with the power of the visual image. We watch the process of this creation from erratic

brainstorming (“a young girl – in rubble – with a kitten – too static…. running! – running

with a kitten …”) to the systematic creation of a Hollywood illusion. (24:13). Motss

pores over headshots to cast an appropriate “victim”; he then directs her to run in front of

a blue screen clutching a bag of Tostitos – representing the kitten – so as to maximize his

options later on. The artists then assemble their fictional invention piece by piece, adding

a village behind her, a bridge, the sound of screaming, some flames – culminating in a

comical but passionate debate between Motss and the (still off-screen) President over the

relative merits of using a white versus a calico kitten. The same deliberate staging of

events later produces an encounter between the president and a grateful Albanian refugee

on the occasion of a fictional Albanian harvest festival – and to ensure that the photo

opportunity will have the desired backdrop of rainy weather, they divert the President’s

plane all the way from Washington to Florida, which has a more (un)favorable forecast.

(38:42).

It turns out, however, that Brean’s scheme itself is vulnerable to precisely the

same uncertainty about the authority of reality that permitted its creation in the first place.

Thus Senator Neal (Craig T. Nelson), the opposition presidential candidate, pre-empts

Brean’s fiction by simply going on television and announcing that the war is over (with

the CIA backing him up to the press). Motss objects to this strenuously – “He can’t end

the war; he’s not producing this”– but Brean the realist knows that it doesn’t matter who

is supposed to produce the war; it only matters who produces the relevant effect. (47:45).

“It’s over,” Brean tells Motss. “I saw it on television. I saw it on TV.” (48:33).

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To continue their holding action, Motss and Brean need a new storyline. They

create a myth about a heroic prisoner of war left behind enemy lines, William Schumann

(Woody Harrelson), whose name is chosen because it lends itself easily to the metaphor

that the soldier was discarded like an “old shoe.” Further problems ensue when it turns

out that Schumann, selected simply because of his name, is in fact a psychotic serial

rapist being held in a military prison. (Motss serenely passes on this information: “He

raped a nun – and …”). (1:13:40). After Schumann is killed (in the midst of attempting

another rape), Brean and Motss inventively turn this disaster into another artistic

opportunity, giving Schumann a hero’s funeral complete with raw meat to entice a dog to

follow after the coffin like a loyal pallbearer – a masterful final photo opportunity.

(1:24:50).

Underlying this engaging if unsettling story is a premise in political theory:

namely, that the practice of contemporary American democracy has become

indistinguishable from the methods and substance of popular entertainment.12 Conrad

Brean, who champions this particular premise in Wag the Dog, does not believe it is a

novel idea: to an extent it has always been central to rallying public sentiment in a

democratic context. Brean reminds Motss of the political effectiveness of past war

slogans like “Fifty-four forty or fight” or “Remember the Maine,” slogans we remember,

as Brean observes, long after we’ve forgotten the war. (15:42). Brean’s explanation of

this phenomenon is straightforward enough. “That’s show business. War is show

business. That’s why we’re here,” he explains to Motss. (15:55). Instead of thinking of it

as a war, Brean suggests, it would be better to think of it as “a pageant – we need a

12 For an elaboration of this theme, see Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 20th Anniversary edition (New York: Penguin, 2005), esp. ch. 9.

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theme, a song, some visuals – it’s a pageant.” (17:07).13 In a later prose essay, Mamet

explains his agreement with Brean that this pageantry is of the essence of politics.

As we enter the cinema, we relax our guard. We do so necessarily, because to resist, to insist on reality in the drama, is to rob ourselves of joy. For who would sit through the cartoon thinking constantly, “Wait a second, elephants can’t fly!” Politicians (notably the right, in both America and Britain) have cannily understood this suspension of disbelief and have, since World War II, staged their political campaigns as dramas, with themes, slogans, inflammatory appeals, and villains. This approach has put their opponents at an unfortunate disadvantage; for while the right is staging a thriller, their opponents are stuck presenting a lecture (the preferred tool of the left).14

This reliance on the art of entertainment to do the work of political control in a

democracy means that it is constantly necessary to resort directly to the ordinary methods

of that art.15 For example, throughout Wag the Dog Motss and his Hollywood crowd

operate under the unquestioned assumption that the business of manipulating public

interest and emotion invariably requires “a song.” As soon as Neal ends the (fictional)

war, Motss announces to his songwriter (Willie Nelson) that “we’re gonna need a new

song.” (50:18). Motss and his colleagues produce three songs during the course of their

campaign: “We Guard the American Border,” a “We are the World”-style celebrity

showcase; “Old Shoe,” a blues ballad that purports to have been written half a century

earlier; and “Courage, Mom,” a country-western tearjerker celebrating Schumann’s

message to his mother in Morse Code torn into his sweater. Another important technique

for this brand of politics is making use of the conventions of acting and melodrama. Early

in the film, when Brean has a White House spokesman speak a code phrase on live TV to

13 On the staged artificiality of every aspect of modern political campaigning, the classic work of Daniel Boorstin remains as relevant as ever. Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America, Vintage edition (New York: Vintage, 1992).14 David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), p. 133.15 One of the subtlest and most thoughtful contemporary analyses of this phenomenon is that of Murray Edelman, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

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prove that Motss will have full control over White House communications, the producer

observes with purely aesthetic disappointment, “He didn’t sell the line.” (14:57). Later,

when the President voices an objection that the speech written for him is “corny,” Motss

responds: “Corny! Corny! Of course it’s corny! We wouldn’t have him give it if it

weren’t corny!” (56:24). Motss further coaches the president on using “a little projection”

when delivering his televised address, and even portrays the president, sitting at his desk,

when trying the speech out with a test audience of White House secretaries. (57:29).

As in November, however, in Wag the Dog the power of art can never be cleanly

disentangled from the imperatives of commerce. Motss and his associates put these

techniques at the disposal of Brean and his purposes, but doing so requires them to

entangle politics with the part of show business that is a business, striking a variety of

commercial deals to finance their efforts. Unlike in November, however, commerce does

not drive politics in Wag the Dog; instead, the relevant commercial alliances are

necessary but chosen after the fact, to fund whatever artistic course the manipulators

choose to take for independent political reasons. Thus the “spontaneously emerging”

practice of throwing old shoes into trees in support of the heroic POW “Old Shoe” finds

support from “powerful new friends” in the shoe manufacturing business. (1:02:20).

Likewise, as soon as the war ends Motss and his team strike a deal to create a war

memorial, arranging for themselves to retain the merchandising rights. (1:05:00). The

“Fad King” (Denis Leary) also invents a profitable fast-food tie-in associated with

Schumann’s heroic captivity: “What did he eat behind enemy lines? … Little

cheeseburgers in tin foil … We call Burger King, Johnny Rockets … we make ‘the

Shuburger with cheese … behind enemy lines, or any time’.” (1:05:35). What facilitates

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these commercial alliances, however, is the conspirators’ control over outcomes made

possible by Brean and Motss’s artistic ability to manipulate unfolding events. When

Brean guarantees Motss and his associates that there will be a “back end” to compensate

them for their endeavors, Ames objects, questioning where the money will come from. In

reply, Brean reminds her of the yellow ribbons sold to symbolize the hostages. Yes,

Ames replies, “but that was a naturally occurring – what – that was a put up job?” Brean

doesn’t bother to answer. (21:34).

Producing as a Vocation

Stanley Motss is a Hollywood “producer,” yet at first he doesn’t see the

connection between what he does for a living and the world of politics: “You want me to

produce your war?” he asks incredulously. (17:01). Eventually, however, Motss comes to

see “producing” as not so distant from the work of politics. Throughout Wag the Dog,

Mamet systematically uses the terminology of “producing” to evoke the complicated

relationship between art and commerce. “Producer” names an individual artist’s (or

“artist’s”) role in the process of crafting mass entertainment, while at the same time

evoking the peculiar “modes of production” that drive the commercial dimensions of

“show business.”16

The question of what precisely “producing” is recurs again and again in Wag the

Dog. “Nobody knows what you do,” Motss laments, but he has difficulty himself in

articulating precisely what his vocation consists of. (17:24). Throughout the film he

16 This language necessarily suggests Marx’s notion of “the productive forces” as the defining factor in any era’s political life. See in particular Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Penguin, 2006), Parts 1 and 2.

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offers a variety of definitions of what “producing” is. “You see, this is what producing

is,” Motss tells us, referring to his associates’ uninhibited brainstorming of ideas for

Brean’s fictional war. “You put me in a room with talent…” (22:42). A second version he

offers later in the film. “Thinking ahead, that’s what producing is … It’s like being a

plumber: you do your job and nobody should notice – but when you f**k up everyone

else gets full of s**t.” (1:01:09). On another occasion, Motss offers this definition: “If

you’ve got a problem, solve it: that’s producing.” (1:19:17). A different cut at the issue:

“Producing is being a samurai warrior,”; you train for years (and collect a lot of money

for doing essentially nothing, he implies) so that one day the producer can step into the

midst of a crisis and save the day. (1:21:20).

In his non-fiction writings Mamet also ponders the question of what precisely the

professional motion picture “producer” does or is supposed to do. “What on earth do

these producers do?” he asks, then answers his own question: “A few are entrepreneurs,

raising money for a project under their control; a few are what the shtetl knew as

shtadlans, that is, intermediaries between the powerless (in this case, the filmmaker) and

the state (or studio); the rest are clerks or sycophants.”17 Elsewhere he tells a story about

Otto Preminger that perhaps gets closer to the essence of the way the ideal producer

combines the qualities of artistic invention and commercial savvy. While filming Exodus,

Preminger found himself confronted with a seemingly insurmountable challenge in

constructing the crowd scene in Jerusalem’s Independence Square depicting the public

proclaiming of the foundation of the state of Israel. Preminger, Mamet reports, “required

a packed square, some ten thousand extras. He could not pay for them. ‘What did you

do?’ I asked. ‘I charged them,’ he said. He papered the town with posters: BE IN A

17 Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla, p. 23.

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MOVIE, TEN SHEKELS. That’s what I call a producer.”18 In the original novel on which

Wag the Dog was based, the main Hollywood character enlisted by the political fixer was

a writer, not a producer.19 In light of the above reflections in his non-fiction prose, we

may conjecture that turning Motss into a producer was Mamet’s own innovation, and that

it is meant to signify the producing vocation’s peculiar melding of artistic and

commercial concerns.

The language of producing permeates political activity in Wag the Dog. The most

overt echo occurs in Senator Neal’s repeated challenge to the President after Schumann

goes missing: “Produce this Schumann. Produce him, I say, or, and I don’t hesitate to say

this, mark him down as just another in a series of broken promises.” (1:21:20). And

Motss understands with great exactness that “producing” Schumann is the central

element both of what he is trying to do and of what the audience expects and demands.

It’s a “big mistake,” he tells Brean, to bring Schumann onto the public stage immediately

to satisfy popular interest:

MOTSS: You gotta bring him in by stages…. Schumann is the shark…. You don’t put Jaws in the first reel of the movie… It’s the contract…. Vote for me Tuesday; Wednesday, I will produce Schumann…. See: that’s what they’re paying their seven bucks for. (1:08:55)

The notion that politics may be “produced” in the same way as a motion picture

explains why Wag the Dog is able to make the possibility of an alliance between the

political profession and the entertainment industry seem so appealing, and indeed

inevitable. Yet whatever the attractions of this alliance to its participants, it carries clear

dangers as well. Throughout Wag the Dog we find an ambivalence among professional

18 Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla, pp. 13-14. Credit for the maneuver described in this anecdote should probably go not to Preminger but to its real inventor, Tom Sawyer.19 The original novel is Larry Beinhart, American Hero (New York: Random House, 1995).

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political operators about their newfound reliance on the producer and his methods of

entertainment. Only once do we observe any figure in Wag the Dog exhibiting a genuine

political conviction, but it is a telling moment. After the plane crash, presidential aide

Ames vents her fury at Brean and Motss and finally on a malfunctioning television set.

“Leave it alone,” Brean tells her. “What did television ever do to you?” She retorts: “It

destroyed the electoral process.” (1:18:44). Yet in other respects, Ames has thoroughly

internalized the priorities of image and appearance derived from the entertainment culture

of the producer, though with a laughably bureaucratic tinge. When Ames participates in

filming the fake footage of the Albanian war – an act which from any sane perspective

constitutes one of the greatest conspiracies against democracy ever perpetrated – her

principal concern has to do with potential image problems associated with the citizenship

of the actress brought on board to portray the “victim.” “She’s not an illegal immigrant, is

she?” Ames frets. “Because the President can’t employ an illegal immigrant…” (This is

an especially unlikely conjecture, since the actress is played by Kirsten Dunst). (32:17).

Later in the film, the same concern arises in the aftermath of the plane crash when Brean,

Motss, Ames, and Schumann are picked up by a Chicano truck driver. To Ames the

problematic nature of the situation is obvious: “He doesn’t have a green card. He doesn’t

have his green card. He doesn’t have his green card…. We can’t have Schumann being

rescued by an illegal alien.” (1:22:31). One of the film’s final images is this same truck

driver being sworn in to the duties of citizenship, in an effort to dispose of this perception

problem. To modify a phrase of Mark Twain’s, the bureaucratic Ames knows the words

but not the music of the new entertainment politics of the producer, as we can see very

clearly in her ham-fisted attempt to offer an inspiring speech to her fellow White House

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staffers after the war unexpectedly ends prematurely. “People!” she begins: “it is in the

works!; it is being addressed!; we are being proactive …” Motss the producer, realizing

that Ames is tone-deaf, steps in at this point to try to offer his own words of

encouragement, but his effort, though better than Ames’s, still leaves something to be

desired. “This is politics at its finest,” he tells the assembled White House staffers, who

seem to be wondering uneasily whether he might be right. (55:01).

This reflects Motss’s attitude throughout: in the producer’s view, politics is the

same as entertainment, and indeed is improved by an explicit recognition of this fact. “A

simple quirk of fate, I could’ve gone this way,” Motss tells Brean. “It’s just a change of

wardrobe.” (58:10). In a similar exchange, Brean comments to Motss, regarding their

conspiracy of invention: “Not bad for government work.” Motss responds: “Haven’t had

this much fun since live TV,” as though they were discussing the same profession.

(1:00:19). All this is consistent with Motss’s absurdly self-satisfied view of the

importance and idealism of the producer’s vocation. “You know, you can’t save the

world,” he remarks loftily to Brean at the end of the film, “all you can do is

try.”(1:26:41).

For Motss, then, the pitch-perfect fraud they have been perpetrating does indeed

constitute “politics at its finest.” But his audience of professional political operators in the

White House bunker know, or at least hope, that this is not quite right; they sense the

danger the producer poses to any system of power which has a democratic basis, and

even though they need him for the moment they remain wary of him (as reflected in

Ames’s hostility towards him after the plane crash.) For while the methods of artistic

invention may be irresistible to the political practitioner in a democracy, they are also

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ultimately incompatible with democracy insofar as it involves consulting rather than

shaping the public will. And indeed we find that the producer and his entourage have no

respect of any kind for the value of self-governance. The endlessly repetitive and inane

commercials from the President’s re-election campaign drive Motss crazy, but when he

asks his Hollywood colleagues the fateful question “would you vote on the basis of

that?,” we discover that none of these people manipulating the outcome of a presidential

election has ever bothered to vote. (27:24). (They have good excuses, though: one finds

the voting booths “too claustrophobic,” while another was disillusioned when he cast his

first vote, without avail, for Boog Powell as first baseman in the All-Star balloting. Motss

defends his own lack of citizen participation by observing, “I always vote for the

Academy Awards –but I never win.”) (27:26).

We can perceive more clearly the advantages and disadvantages for democracy

characteristic of the producer’s vocation by contrasting Motss’s methods and priorities

with those of the “fixer” Brean. Side by side with Ames’s and Motss’s speeches, Brean’s

own attempt to raise the staffers’ flagging morale evinces a clearer understanding of the

realities of political action than that of either Ames or Motss. His is a clear-eyed

acceptance of the Machiavellian necessities of the moment. “This is a sh**ty business

and it needs no ghost come from the past to tell us that,” Brean acknowledges, but then

offers the payoff for their acceptance of these questionable tactics: “Lord willing and

Jesus tarries, eight days from now I will be taking you into the second term.” (54:34).

Such matter-of-factness about the necessary compromises of political life reflects the

maxim that has guided Brean since his first glib remarks about the fictional “B-3

bomber” and the inevitability of war with Albania: “a good plan today,” he maintains, “is

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better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” (54:51). Brean later puts the same point a different

way in an extremely loose (and comically misleading) paraphrase of one of the

foundational thoughts of political philosophy: “It’s like Plato once said,” Brean tells

Motss and Ames, “it doesn’t matter how the f**k you get there as long as you get there.”

(58:35).

Perhaps the most revealing moment with respect to Brean’s mode of operating

takes place when he is confronted about the fake war by the CIA, who are perfectly

aware that there is no “real” war in Albania. Brean’s initial response is telling, and will be

echoed later in the movie when the war ends: “Of course there’s a war. I’m watching it

on TV.” (41:20). The CIA man (William H. Macy) insists, asserting that all their sources,

including their spy satellites over Albania, show that there is “no war.” Brean’s lengthy

response to this accusation captures the essence of his approach to political manipulation,

weaving back and forth between arguments of public and private utility with such

subtlety that one eventually begins to lose track of which is which.

BREAN: Then what good are they [the spy satellites]? … Are they broke? … What good are they if they show no war? … If there’s no war, what good are you? … What have I been doing the last 30 years that you haven’t been doing?

CIA: I’ve been working to ensure the security of my country….

BREAN: … But if forced to choose between the security of your country and the security of your job, which would you pick? And while you hesitate, let me suggest to you that they are one and the same: your country and your job…. (41:42).

For Brean, then, as for President Charles Smith in November, the personal (that is,

the pecuniary) and the political are indistinguishable for those who make a vocation of

politics. The flip side of devoting one’s life to the affairs of state is that one may come to

view the good of the nation as one’s own good, and conversely one’s own good as that of

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the nation.20 Certainly this is the view that Brean tries to cultivate as an excuse for his

own activities and for the collusion of others in them.

BREAN: Why do people go to war?

CIA: To ensure their way of life.

BREAN: Would you go to war to do that?

CIA: I have!

BREAN: And if you went to war again, who would it be against? Huh? Your ability to fight a two-ocean war against who? Who? Sweden and Togo? That time is past. It’s over. The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is, and it’ll be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst perhaps even to their own governments, have blah blah blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you have to be prepared, you gotta be alert, the public has gotta be alert, because that is the war of the future. (42:30).

Here Brean goes to considerable trouble to provide a plausible public-interest based case

for the CIA to encourage false belief in a fictional Albanian conflict. But having

established this case for his invented war being in the public interest, Brean goes on to

underline the private interest which his audience (the CIA) has in ensuring the success of

his plan, further blurring the line between the personal and the political. Brean warns the

CIA:

BREAN: And if you’re not gearing up to fight that war, then eventually the axe will fall and you’re gonna be out in the street. And you can call this a drill, you can call this job security, you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you. You said go to war to preserve your way of life? Well, Chuck, this, this is your way of life. And if your spy satellites don’t see nothin’, if there ain’t no war, then you can go home and prematurely take up golf, my friend. ‘Cause there ain’t no war but ours. (43:02).

In contrast to the effect he has on those around him, however, Brean never loses

sight of what is real and what is fictional. Even though he sometimes says things like “Of

20 This was one of the traditional arguments for the value of monarchy: the prince saw the country’s good and his own as inseparable, and so would pursue the one to profit the other.

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course there’s a war, I’m watching it on TV” or “It’s over, I saw it on television,”

affording television the prerogative to pronounce authoritatively on “reality,” Brean,

unlike Motss, is in fact always perfectly clear about what really constitutes reality.

“We’re not gonna have a war,” he says from the outset, “we’re gonna have the

appearance of the war.” (8:27). Fraud may be a necessary part of politics, but politics

commits its frauds for reasons grounded in reality, and Brean, the quintessential political

creature, never loses sight of the real political reasons that make his frauds advantageous.

From this comparison of the fixer’s political art with that of the producer, we can

see more clearly wherein the threat to the alliance between entertainment and politics

consists. The root of the conflict lies in the fact that, as Plato famously noted of the

entertainment professionals of his own day, for the producer fiction serves not just as

means to an end, but as an end in itself.21 This leads them, first, to be unable or unwilling

to distinguish fiction from reality; and second, to treat success at fraud as something

worthy of genuine moral approbation, rather than something shameful to be used and

then hidden away. Motss’s inability to distinguish fiction from reality begins to emerge

forcefully midway through the film. Watching a concert on TV in which Merle Haggard

plays one of the songs they have produced for their pageant, Brean and Motss note a

tearful reaction shot of a female audience member. “That was real tears,” Motss says, and

as we are wondering how he knows this, he signals to us what his sense of “reality”

encompasses: “They were gonna give her drops, but they didn’t have to.” (1:10:05).

Later, when they discover Schumann’s psychotic tendencies, Brean and Ames are

21 Plato, The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. and with an interpretive essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 376d-398b, 595a-607d.

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anxious but Motss is unperturbed. “If you look at the backstory,” Motss says, his

condition is perfectly understandable; Schumann may appear abnormal, but

MOTSS: … you would be too if you’d been through what he had.

BREAN: He raped a nun.

MOTSS: What he went through in Albania…. (1:19:54).

This uncertainty about the line between reality and fantasy runs through Motss’s whole

life; even when he dies, the obituary declares that “Mr. Motss was 57 or 62 depending on

the bio.” (1:32:55).

Not only does Motss have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality, he also

tends to view his achievements in fiction – which in this political context is to say, his

achievements in public deception – as worthy of honor and recognition, even above the

more imperfect achievements that are possible in political reality. Like all arts, the

producing vocation depends for its reward on recognition of its creative achievements,

and yet, as Motss observes, by its very imprecision the vocation of producing has

difficulty grasping this reward. There’s no Academy Award for producing, Motss

complains to anyone who will listen. There is only one reward for producing: “all you’ve

got is the credit.” (17:25). This longing for artistic recognition is something Brean does

not share; though he has long been a kind of “producer” himself, he, unlike Motss, is

content to enjoy his artistic achievements in anonymity. After Senator Neal announces

that the conflict in Albania is over, Motss wonders aloud if they could get the President

the peace prize for ending the war:

MOTSS: Our guy did bring peace.

BREAN: Yeah, but there wasn’t a war.

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MOTSS: All the greater accomplishment. (1:01:44).

In the end, this desire for public recognition of his artistic fiction leads Motss to

his doom, forcing agents acting on behalf of the President to kill him in order to keep him

from going public with the story of the Albanian fraud. Motss finds himself unbearably

provoked by the fact that, because of the secrecy necessary to his task, the media instead

assign credit for the president’s stunning turnaround in electoral fortunes to the inane

commercial campaign of his traditional political handlers – the simple, tirelessly repeated

message of which is “don’t change horses in midstream.” In the end, this commercial

campaign is what receives the all-important “credit” awarded by the pundits for achieving

the president’s election victory, and Motss finds this insupportable because it is

incompatible with his vision of himself as an artist in fiction:

MOTSS: I’ve got to answer to a higher calling: Art…. I didn’t do this for money. I did this for credit… I put this together out of spit and polish…. Look at that. That is a complete f**king fraud and it looks 100% real. It’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s so honest… I did it … pure Hollywood … I want the credit…. (1:29:07).

But Motss’s ambition for artistic recognition of his fraud is a hopeless aspiration,

even if it were not the case that the powers that be refuse to permit it. The public fraud of

Wag the Dog may constitute an achievement by the standards of the poetic profession,

whose trade depends upon fiction. But it is an achievement that will vanish the moment

the spell is broken and the public can see their deception for what it really is. We as

citizens of a democracy may in practice prefer image to reality, but at least we are

logically precluded from knowingly preferring it.

It is because of the logical incommensurability of these goods that the kind of

creative activity chronicled in Wag the Dog is not even on the radar screen of the media.

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Instead, they are forced to attribute the President’s success, not to “the events, which of

course you can not control,” but instead to “the spin.” As a chorus of pundits elaborates at

the film’s conclusion:

PUNDITS: Well, the message is irrelevant. Fear is what’s driving a lot of people…. Yes, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials…. Well, yes, the President is a product. He’s the President of the United States….. Yes, commercials, commercials, commercials, commercials…. It’s time the American people took a look at that…. (1:27:52).

Clearly these commentators are deceived in thinking that it is only “the spin” which

political actors are able to control, since Wag the Dog (echoing and expanding the claim

made in November) demonstrates that through artistry the political actor is able to shape

not only the spin used in interpreting the events of public life, but the events themselves.

But the commentators are correct in perceiving, however inadequately, that the President

is a “product.” What the film Wag the Dog has tried to suggest, however, is that the

American public has misunderstood what kind of a product he is: he is not only a

commercial product, but also an artistic product, and these two modes of production can

conflict.

Conclusion

Both November and Wag the Dog portray politics (and specifically the

presidency) as occurring at the intersection of art and commerce. The president is a

commercial product; yet he is also a natural focus for the powers of artistic invention.

While not at all sanguine about the dangers which commerce may pose, both of Mamet’s

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political comedies explicitly suggest that, of the two forces, art may in the end prove even

more dangerous as a form of infection in the body politic.

The danger to democracy of allowing the president to become a commercial

product may be very great, in that it cheapens and degrades our institutions of leadership

and governance to conform to the standards of an indifferent market beholden to our

basest desires. But this danger is held in check by the fact that we still feel we are

somehow superior to commercial advertisements: they influence us without our knowing

it, but they are not our masters, and we can still ignore them, laugh at them, and get a

beer from the fridge during them as we so desire. In the same way, we can maintain an

appropriate critical distance on politicians to the extent that they remain commercial

products.

But if political “producers” such as Charles Smith, Conrad Brean and Stanley

Motss discover they are able to make the president an “artistic” as well as a commercial

product, the danger is heightened in two separate but equally troubling directions. Either

this will force us to gain a much greater critical distance over our art, so that it is no

longer able to move us, or it will make us vulnerable to manipulation of a far more

powerful and elusive kind than the commercial culture has yet been able to attain. And

there is perhaps an even greater danger lurking behind these: the possibility that these two

individual threats will combine their strength as the process unfolds in American culture

of our commercials becoming our art, and vice versa.

Given the commercial crudity of much of our public life, it is understandable that

many in America long for a more artistic politics, one which invokes grander themes and

nobler sentiments than those which dominate our familiar commercial campaign. But

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those of us who do so must recognize that in the context of a culture like ours this is

potentially a very dangerous longing. For the attraction of art for politics is also its

fundamental danger. We retain, thankfully, some degree of critical distance with respect

to the commercial dimensions of our lives. But art’s power has always been its ability to

overwhelm our critical defenses; and this greatly increases art’s potential, should we

entrust our politics to it, to betray not only our hopes but also our capacity for genuine

self-governance as well. As the power of artistic invention threatens to reach ever deeper

into our political life, the choice we face may well be between closing our hearts, or else

surrendering them, to its ancient spell.22

22 I am grateful to Michaele Ferguson, Margaret Hrezo, Travis D. Smith, and Charles Turner for helpful comments on previous drafts of this essay. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Derek Cowan for long ago introducing me to the writings of David Mamet, a discovery that has been only one of the many dividends of our friendship.

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